A/N:

Quidditch League: Round Twelve - Wigtown Wanderers: KEEPER - An arrow on your wrist points you in the direction of your soulmate, like a compass.

Harry & Andromeda (Platonic Only/No Romance)

Mentions of Grief/Past Character Death/Implied Depression

Hogwarts Day 7: Auction 4 - Ravenclaw: Prompt: (Character) Andromeda Black

Word Count: 3,000


The war ends, and the Great Hall fills with people. Everyone collides in exaltation and disperses again, seeking out open arms and familiar faces. Dirt-streaked and exhausted, Harry sits above it all, collapsed on his old bed in Gryffindor's dormitory. The sheets aren't his and the pillow isn't his, but the canopy is the same, and the curtains swaddle him in darkness.

He's too numb and too tired to examine everything he feels. He's too tired to feel anything at all. All the explanations have been given, sandwiches have been eaten, and all he wants to do now is sleep for a long time and wake up on a much kinder day.

But he doesn't get his wish. When he rolls over on the pillow, eyes fluttering shut as he succumbs to the pull of sleep, he catches a glint of black against his bare, upturned wrist.

An arrow.


"I think you might have repressed it," Hermione says, leafing through a book with keen interest. "I'll have to research it."

"We did research it though, remember?" Ron says from where he's lying prone on his bed, staring listlessly at the ceiling. "We spent all of our first year digging through books and we didn't find anything."

"We didn't have all the information in our first year! I've kept up to date with new articles and fresh research, but we know so much more now. Do you think it has something to do with the Horcruxes?"

Harry shrugs, glancing at the thin bandage covering his wrist, hiding the arrow from view. Ron and Hermione's arrows are on full display, etched neatly and vibrantly into their skin, pointing across the sunlit room towards each other. He can't bring himself to reveal his. Ever since he learned what soulmates and soulmarks were, he's wanted his arrow to come to the surface. It was always there before, lurking faintly beneath the skin like seaweed under the water, a murky indecipherable streak. He used to poke it when he was younger, trying to see what the picture could be. He knew nothing about arrows and what they pointed to until he was older, and Hagrid taught him everything he knew.

Everyone else had vivid, shining arrows that twirled and spun. Harry's arrow was a mere frozen sliver, hiding its face.

But now that it's heavy and dark and moving, all he wants is to scrape it off his skin.

"How it happened doesn't matter," Ron says, ignoring Hemrione's indignant noise. "What matters is that you've got a way to find your soulmate now. You don't have to look for them, but at least you know you'll be able to track them down if you want to. We're with you every step of the way, mate."

Even Hermione has nothing to add to that. She smiles at Harry, her fingers still twitching against the cover of the book, and as the conversation tumbles on, he can't help but think that he's already found the two most important people in his life, regardless of what a little arrow has to say about it.


Harry throws himself head-first into his life. It's easy enough to ignore the arrow; all he does is wrap a fresh bandage around it every now and again, and get on with things. He guts Grimmauld Place and rips up the garden and answers Floo calls, all the while pretending he doesn't feel the urge to lift the fabric and peer at that arrow.

The first time Harry visits Andromeda after the very last funeral, she slams the door in his face. The second time, she refuses to open it at all. And the fifth time, after he knocks and knocks until his knuckles threaten to bruise, she whips open the door with a molten glare and drags him into the living room.

Teddy is there. Awake and sniffling. Clean and rosy-cheeked and mousy-haired.

"If you're going to be here, make yourself useful," she snaps, stomping upstairs. "There's a bottle ready for him on the side."

It's not quite what Harry imagined. He squats down in front of Teddy's bouncer, and they stare at each other uncertainly for a bit. "Hi," he says. "I'm your godfather, I suppose. You can just call me Harry though."

When he lifts Teddy out of the bouncer and Teddy grabs his hair with an iron-like strength, it's like all his stress falls away. The exhaustion, the fumbling remnants of fear, the anxiety piled at the back of his neck from hearings and court cases and eulogies; all of it totters off the edge of his mind, skittering to the floor.

He breathes a little easier. He takes Teddy to the kitchen and they argue a little bit over whether or not a bottle is in order right now; Harry says that it is, and Teddy slaps his cheek and hand and the bottle before finally caving and sucking down half a pint of milk. It's quiet here, in the kitchen, and at first it feels unnerving, but soon he forgets it all in favour of pulling faces at the baby in his arms, marvelling over how heavy he is already.

"You have to burp him."

Andromeda stands in the doorway, her hair wet and lying tangled around her shoulders. She's wearing a large, borrowed shirt with a picture of a golfer on it. It says 'just an ordinary tee-shirt.' Her stern expression softens in the face of Harry's bewilderment, and she slumps across the kitchen towards him.

"Here," Andromeda says, holding out her hands. "I'll show you."

Teddy babbles in her arms. She coos back, arranging a tea-towel over her shoulder. It's a sweet scene, and it opens a hole in Harry's chest, something hot and painful that overwhelms him suddenly. He's not sure why he starts to cry, but the tears are silent and unstoppable.

"See?" Andromeda says, as she pats and rubs Teddy's back, only to startle when she catches sight of his face.

"Sorry," he says, ducking his head to hide his face from view. "Sorry, I don't know why."

When he comes back up for air, Andromeda is watching him, lines of exhaustion worked into her skin. She smiles at him wryly, still rubbing Teddy's back.

"I know why," she says. "You need a cup of tea. C'mon, you summon the mugs, and I'll put the kettle on. Sugar?"


It becomes a daily occurrence. There's nobody waiting for him at Grimmauld Place, and the Burrow feels stifling and far too silent to be comfortable. He wanders up the garden path to Andromeda's house every day and spends a few nights on the sofa here and there, getting up to check on Teddy whenever he cries. He's a quiet baby at first, and it's clear that he doesn't know what to do with Harry at first, but after a few weeks of fetching things whenever Teddy throws them and playing silly games in a high-pitched voice, Teddy's hair starts to turn messy and black and his eyes shine like emeralds.

Harry loves him. Maybe it's not right to use a baby to heal, but every time he starts to feel guilty about it, Andromeda scuffs his ear gently.

"Everything is terrible enough without torturing yourself over idiotic reasons," she tells him. "You're not using a baby to heal. He's taking care of you while you take care of him. Speaking of, he needs changing."

That bit, Harry could do without. But it becomes routine soon enough. He takes Teddy on walks when Andromeda needs a moment and drinks countless cups of tea with her when she needs company and he can't stand to be alone. She is still a little hesitant around him, for reasons that he won't dig for, but when she realises that he likes to cook in spite of Petunia, it opens up something new for them.

"I'll teach you to make something new," she says. "Ted was… well, he was much better than me, although neither of us were excellent. But when I finally escaped my awful family, I took great pride in learning to do things that I was encouraged to avoid before. Ladies and Purebloods do not cook. Ladies and Purebloods have House Elves to do the cooking for them. I may be a lady and a Pureblood, but I make a fantastic pie, Potter."

"Harry," he tells her. "Just Harry, please. I'd love to learn."

And she dips her head, acknowledging and accepting, and says, "What kind of pie do you want to make, Harry?"


A few days is all it takes for Andromeda to bully him into her kitchen, the ingredients for a pie spread out on the counter. She hands Teddy over; Harry tucks his nose into that soft downy hair and breathes in the soothing scent of baby powder, listening to Andromeda's precise instructions. Their conversation lulls, but he can see something weighing on her tongue.

"Spit it out," Harry says, while Teddy burbles away in his ear.

"Oh, hush," Andromeda says, as she rolls out the pastry. "I was getting there."

She does eventually get there. Harry stands Teddy on the kitchen table and watches him bounce, holding his hands tightly.

"It's been almost a month, and you haven't asked me why I was so reluctant to let you in at first," Andromeda begins, an unusual hint of caution in her voice. "I was warned of your insatiable curiosity, but it seems remarkably absent."

"I thought you just didn't want to see anybody. I didn't realise it had anything to do with me." He hesitates, and then pushes on, dodging one of Teddy's flailing feet and catching him when he loses balance. "For a while I thought maybe you hated me for not saving her. But I don't think it's that. Not anymore."

"Never that." Andromeda looks pale but stern, setting aside her rolling pin. "You're the reason we get to have peace now, whatever that looks like. The war may have been bigger than one person, or even two, but there is no denying who carried the hope of ending it."

Harry scoops Teddy up and holds him close, earning countless complaints and little giggles. If he thinks about any of it for too long, that numb feeling threatens to overwhelm him.

"I'm sorry that it was you, Harry," Andromeda says, her voice ringing off the kitchen walls, soft but inescapable. "You should have had more help. You should never have had to bear the weight in the first place."

"You're going to burn your pie," Harry murmurs.

The pie is not in the oven yet, still disassembled on the counter. But Andromeda hums as though he's made an excellent point, and Harry can breathe as she turns away.


The question refuses to leave him alone after that. Why did she turn him away? She never gave him an answer, and he never truly asked, but it was clearly on her mind, judging by her nervous way of bringing it up.

It bugs him. He goes over it in his head. When Hermione tentatively suggests something, her head bobbing in the Floo, it sends Harry reeling.

"That can't be it," he says, bewildered, but she's rarely wrong.

And she isn't wrong this time.


"It's you, isn't it?"

He brings it up during nap-time, when both of them have to be quiet. Teddy sniffles at the sound of his voice, shuffling in the bouncer, but doesn't wake. Andromeda looks up from her book, a faint crease in her brow.

"What's me?" she asks.

Harry holds out his bare wrist. The arrow points directly at her.

The blood drains out of her face. After a tremulous moment, Andromeda carefully sets her book on the table and rolls up her sleeve. The black arrow on her wrist points directly at Harry. The tip glows a soft, muted blow, and the mark on his wrist echoes the sentiment. Two souls, lumped together at the end of things and aimed right at each other.

"Oh." All the breath leaves Harry in a rush. "You didn't say anything."

"I resented it at first," Andromeda admits. She looks guilty, and a little annoyed with herself. "Not you, of course. Well, a little bit you, if we're being honest. But mostly I resented the mark itself for finally pointing towards my soulmate on the night that I lost my daughter."

Grief is a little bit like a well. Harry feels like a stone chucked inside to gauge the depth, but every time he thinks the bottom is within reach, freefall begins anew. Images flash behind his eyelids. Tonks and Remus, peaceful and together, pale and still.

"When I met Ted, I hoped it would be him," she says. "And then we had Dora and I was so sure that it would point to her. My dearest. But it never did. And I didn't mind because it meant there would be more people to love in my life, and who would complain about that?" Andromeda pauses, a bitter laugh falling from her lips. "Who indeed. I would, I suppose. But it has nothing to do with you, Harry. I resent the fact that I had to lose her first."

"It's alright," Harry says, shaking his head. "I don't blame you for resenting me. It'd make me a pretty big hypocrite if I did."

Andromeda frowns. "You resented me too?"

"I didn't know anything about soulmarks until I was eleven," Harry explains. "I always had an arrow, but it was almost invisible, and it never moved. Hagrid told me what they meant."

He remembers that moment clearly. Sticking his skinny wrist out, pushing up the over-large sleeve while a boat rowed them safely across the choppy sea, taking them away from the Dursleys. "Is this something to do with magic?" he'd asked, while Hagrid peered at him over the top of his newspaper. And Hagrid's furry eyebrows climbed all the way up his head.

"All my life, there was something different about me," Harry says. "The scar, the mark on my wrist, and the weird stuff that happened when I was younger that nobody could explain. Hagrid said I'd find a soulmate and they'd stick with me through thick and thin."

For a boy without a family and with no friends to speak of, those words had sent a burning surge of yearning through him. He'd clutched the idea of a soulmate close, always looking for them, always keeping an eye out. Even after the Weasleys drew him into their family and even after he found Sirius. Even after he found Ron and Hermione, and decided he was going to keep them as close as he could. He still looked.

But the mark was faint and still. The arrow never pointed anywhere. It was just another strange thing about Harry, the way the arrow was so dull and faint, never leading to anyone. And then, right after the war, when everything was finally over and the dust was beginning to settle, everything changed.

"It felt like a kick in the teeth," Harry says, brushing gentle fingers over Teddy's ear, avoiding Andromeda's sharp gaze. "All the hard stuff had already happened. I'd fought the war and won the battle. We were alone together for months, me and Ron and Hermione, and everything fell apart more times than I can count. And then I walked into a forest, alone, and I died."

Andromeda flinches, hard. Abruptly, Harry rips himself out of his dazed, melancholy recollection and straightens up, meeting her wide-eyed gaze.

"Please don't tell anyone that," he says. "A lot of things happened, and I'm not supposed to… Dumbledore had a lot of secrets, and I took them on when he died. It would be bad if some of them got out."

"You truly died?" she asks, pressing her fingers to her throat. "I heard, but I… I thought it was a ruse. Clever magic to make them think they won."

"No, it wasn't a ruse." The forest rushes back, and Harry closes his eyes against the onslaught of green. "I did die. I just came back."

It sounds so simple, put like that. Something about it breaks the tension. Andromeda snorts, incredibly unladylike, and dissolves into slightly hysterical laughter. Harry can see her mind running and swirling, picking apart what she knows and slotting it together to form something new. A fresh way of looking at each other. He joins her in her dizzy laughter, grinning a bit sheepishly, and they only quiet down when Teddy fusses, kicking his sock-covered feet in disgruntlement.

Andromeda beckons him to the kitchen, and he follows, glancing back at Teddy just once.

"That was quite the tale," she says, once they're out of earshot. "I imagine there's more to it? You don't have to tell me, but… well, we were given these marks for a reason, weren't we? Maybe something knew we would need each other after all this heartache."

Harry's heart thuds against his chest. It doesn't quite soar with hope the way it used to, but he lifts his head, meeting her eyes. They are so much kinder than her sister's, so much less haunted than her cousin's. All he can see is goodness and loss and a flicker of something strong.

"You're sure?" Harry says. "We can ignore these, if you want."

But he knows, even as he says the words, that he won't be ignoring anything. There's Teddy to think about, and now that he's here, he finds it impossible to imagine leaving.

"If the arrows disappear tomorrow morning, or if they decide to turn tail and point somewhere else, then I still expect you to turn up for pie and tea and nappy changes," Andromeda announces, flicking the kettle on with a wave of her wand. "I, for one, have lost enough family lately, and I'd rather like to see it grow instead. How about you?"

Harry grins, and summons the mugs.